CALAMITY HOWLER/A.V. Krebs

Ship of State vs. Lighthouse

It was a beautiful sun-strewn Great Pacific Northwest summer
evening as the mammoth USS Abraham Lincoln slowly entered Port
Gardner and made its way to its way to its home slit at Naval
Station-Everett.

The carrier had recently spent nine months at the Puget Sound
Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., where it underwent major
refurbishing and modernization and then proceeded for five days of
sea trials.

As it approached, its 4.5 acres of deck space now devoid of
aircraft, appeared empty and lifeless with the exception of tiny
objects encircling its entire deck. As it passed a tiny park from
which I was watching its arrival, the objects began to take on a life
and I realized it was the ship's crew forming a perimeter around the
deck.

Watching it begin to maneuver into position for arrival at its
home port I couldn't help but think of an old joke about a Navy
ship's dispute with Canadian authorities on a cruise off the coast of
Newfoundland.

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to
avoid a collision.

US Navy: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north
to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15
degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

US Navy: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again,
divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again, divert YOUR course.

US Navy: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND
LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED
BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS, AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I
DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH ... I SAY AGAIN
... THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH ... OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE
UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP!!

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

More memorable, however was the USS Abraham Lincoln's arrival at
its home port in Everett in May 2003. In July 2002, Lincoln was
deployed to familiar waters albeit an unfamiliar world after the
events of Sept. 11, 2001. It assumed duties in the Arabian Gulf in
support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Southern Watch. The ship's
deployment was then extended to further support Operation Southern
Watch and Iraqi Freedom as US forces occupied Iraq.

Its extended 10-month deployment ended with its
Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, dressed in full "Top Gun" regalia
landing on the deck and later congratulating the ship for its efforts
after the ship had carefully maneuvered into position so as not to
reveal the San Diego skyline in the background only a short
helicopter ride away. It was on its flight deck that Bush declared
"we" had won the Iraqi war while the infamous "Mission Accomplished"
banner was stretched overhead.

Like this day in June 2007, I remembered watching the Lincoln
returning to Everett in May 2003 and thinking only about the terrible
destructive power that had been released from its deck in the
previous months. Now 3,598 deaths and 26,350 wounded later (as of
July 4) the "mission" has still not been accomplished nor does it
appear to be resolved anytime soon.

In the meantime we have been lied to, deceived and seen our
Constitutional form of government corrupted, if not totally
disregarded. Our "Top Gun" has declared publicly that he is the
"Decider" in "my government."

Indeed the commutation of "Scooter" Libby was only the tip of an
iceberg when it comes to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney putting their
egos and dubious legacies before the good of the country and the laws
which they swore to protect.

To draw a parallel, while one could justifiably argue the Richard
M. Nixon was also more conscious during the Watergate scandal
regarding his legacy than he was in protecting the laws of the land.
But in the end, as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, chronicles:

"When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special
prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous 'Saturday Night
Massacre' on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and
ominously. 'Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of
men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.'

"President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the
issue of Watergate for the American people. It had been about the
obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's
headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in
and the related crimes.

"And in one night, Nixon transformed it. -- instantaneously -- so
it became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable
march of the law ... of insisting -- in a way that resonated
viscerally with millions who had not previously understood -- that he
was the law.

"Not the Constitution.

"Not the Congress.

"Not the Courts.

"Just him."

Olbermann argues, "Just -- Mr. Bush -- as you did, yesterday. The
twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies
that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the
lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies
to throw the sand at the 'referee' of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy
... these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much,
perhaps, for the average citizen.

"But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr.
Bush -- and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge
and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal -- the average citizen
understands that, Sir.

"It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the
pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one -- and it stinks. And they
know it.

"Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of
Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end,
even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an
impeachment. It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the
decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of
acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to 'base,'
but to country, echoes loudly into history.

"Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign . ..."

Now as the USS Abraham Lincoln glides into its home dock once
again and I look around the park observing happy families and people
enjoying an evening picnic the words of the ship's namesake echo in
my head.

"... that we here resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth."

It is only logical, I think to myself, that the best place to
begin that "new birth of freedom" is for George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney to resign their offices immediately.